Medieval English Pulpits

Charles Tracy

Although most of the ancient
pulpits in English churches were made
within a century of the Reformation,
their function was not an invention of the
late-medieval church. Pulpits are thought
to have originated from the raised platform
from which the Rabbi read the scriptures in
the Jewish temple. They are descended from
the ambos, symmetrical pairs of elevated
stone platforms which flanked the stone choir
enclosures of early-Christian churches, and
from which the Epistle, generally on the south
side, and the Gospel, on the north side, were
read.

By the Middle Ages they had migrated to
the nave in the guise of a pulpit and a lectern.
Before the consolidation of the pulpit as a
permanent fixture from the mid 14th century,
preachers used either the altar or chancel
steps, or a portable square and somewhat
makeshift, utilitarian raised platform, which
is sometimes illustrated in manuscripts. The
authorities clearly felt a need to regularise
this informal arrangement into the dignified
structures that we see today – indisputably
objects of parochial pride and authority.

The arrival in England, from the late 12th
century, of the mendicant friars injected new
life into the practice of preaching, already firmly
established since at least the 7th century. The
friars were in stiff competition with traditional
parish churches and, in return for the alms
of the faithful, were offering attractive burial
rights and the hosting of chantries* (see glossary) for the
deceased in their churches.

Proclaiming the
Gospel, often in the open air on raised wooden
platforms, was possibly their most successful
strategy for capturing a new following. The
established parish churches tried to counter
this challenge by exhorting their clergy, as at
the Synod of Oxford in 1223, to ‘preach the
Word of God, and not to be dumb dogs, but
with salutary bark to drive away the disease
of spiritual wolves from the flock’. Although
this may not have been a deliberate attempt
to fend off the depredations of the friars,
it certainly sounds like an exhortation to
meet the competition on their own terms.
Exceptionally, some churches boasted an
integral exterior pulpit, famously the one at
St Paul’s Cathedral, known as ‘Paul’s Cross’.

Little remains of England’s friary churches,
and even less of their furnishings. However, the
Ham stone pulpit (Figure 1) at Frampton,
near Dorchester, Dorset, although restored,
displays two high-relief figure panels, which
suggest a possible Franciscan provenance.
Against this is the fact that the style of the pulpit
is contemporary with the restoration of the
church by the dean and canons of St Stephen’s,
Westminster in about 1460-70. Like most of
its kind, the pulpit has been moved at least
once. It has also lost three of its six medieval
carved figural high-relief limestone panels.
Given the iconoclasm of the Reformation and
the Commonwealth period, and although
the panels have since been re-cut, they
remain remarkable survivals of their genre.

The centre panel of the remaining three
(on the left in Figure 1), depicts a friar
holding a monstrance* in his right hand and
a closed book in his left. On either side are
two containers, fashioned as a church or
temple, one possibly a reliquary , the other a
pyx*. Quite probably this figure represents
St Bonaventura, an Italian Franciscan and one of the most renowned 13th-century scholastics.
(Scholasticism was a method of theology and
philosophy disseminated in medieval European
universities – based on Aristotelian logic and
the works of the early Christian fathers, it placed
a strong emphasis on tradition and dogma.)

Bonaventura was famed as both a preacher
and teacher. The ostentatious knotting of his
cord, a hallmark of the order, and that of the
adjacent friar holding a cross and book, strongly
suggests that they were both Franciscans. This
would have been very unusual subject matter
for a parish church and it is conceivable that
the pulpit was removed at the Reformation
from the Franciscan friary in Dorchester.

Whether it was delivered in Anglo-Saxon,
Latin or English, under the 24th Canon of the
Edict of Arles (398 AD), it was enjoined that
anyone caught leaving the church during the
sermon would be excommunicated. According
to the Rites of Durham (discussed in more
detail in Allan Doig’s article 'Sacred Space: Liturgy and Architecture at Durham Cathedral' also in this edition of Historic Churches) the
monastery’s monks were wont to preach from
one o’clock to three o’clock in the Galilee
Chapel, hardly challenging the stamina of
Soviet-era politicians but still demonstrating
a certain tenacity. In his A Werke for
Householders, first printed in 1530, the cleric and
theologian Richard Whitford was by no means
alone in stressing that attendance at preachings was even more important than at the Mass.

During services the Gospel was usually
read from the pulpit, but the latter also fulfilled
another role as a vehicle for the promulgation
of current affairs. In this capacity, it was a
springboard for information about forthcoming
episcopal visitations and indulgences for
various good works, including the repair
and rebuilding of churches. The reading of
the Bede Roll from the pulpit every Sunday,
including the Bidding Prayer ‘for all sorts and
conditions of men’ and the benefactors to the
church, and the announcement of any new
names to be added to it, was both mandatory
and of great importance to the congregation.
This was usually the parish priest’s job, and
he received an annual fee for his trouble.

Manufactured either in wood or stone,
the late-medieval pulpit was always an eye-catcher.
It was usually octagonal or hexagonal
in form, brightly coloured in red, green and
blue, and often gilded, but the pulpit came in
many shapes and sizes. It usually had panelled
sides, often traceried*, incorporating painted
figures or sculptures of the evangelists,
Doctors of the Church and particular saints. The deployment of niches, however, does not
invariably indicate an intention to fill them
with sculpture. At Halberton, Devon, they
were simply decorative, and lack any pedestals.

A wooden pulpit’s rostrum was supported
by a continuous deep plinth, unless it was
stemmed or stood on narrow shafts. The
preacher’s access to the platform was most
often by means of a ladder, or occasionally a
staircase. Only a few of the access stairways
for even stone pulpits have survived and
most of the wooden staircases have perished,
apart from a rare example at East Hagbourne,
Berkshire. An intriguing approach to a rostrum
was provided by means of a wall staircase, as
sometimes employed in monastic refectories,
such as Weston-in-Gordano, Somerset. In
other cases, access was via the rood-loft
stair, as at Cold Ashton, Gloucestershire.

The internal wall staircase at Weston-in-Gordano
would have acted as a resonance
chamber to carry the reader’s voice across the
refectory dining space. We know from the
widespread use in the middle ages of resonance
passages beneath choir-stalls that, in an age
innocent of microphones and loud speakers,
the ability to enhance the carrying power of
the human voice was considered a necessity.
Unsurprisingly, the prehistoric wooden pulpit
illustrated in English manuscripts usually
shows a tester, a term of Middle English origin.
We can assume that a majority of surviving
wooden and stone pulpits were similarly
equipped. It hardly needs saying, that these
sometimes elaborate canopies would have
directed the sound of the priest’s voice down
to the congregation below.

The wooden
canopy at Edlesborough, Buckinghamshire,
is not unlike an outsized font cover, with
its tiered and spired canopy and ‘starburst’
palmate tierceron vault*. It is, doubtless,
excessively elaborate even in comparison with
another rare, but prestigious survivor in the late 15th-century Yorkist collegiate church at
Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire. The latter
was a gift of Edward IV. An example of a stone
pulpit with a tester is at Brockley, Somerset.

Up to around 60 medieval pulpits in stone
and 100 in wood are said to survive in England.
Most are in the West Country, East Anglia and
the Midlands. In 1915 JC Cox found only a single
pulpit in both County Durham and Yorkshire.
There may be a few more than this but no
modern census has been undertaken.[1]

Stone
pulpits are mainly found in Gloucestershire
(17), Somerset (20) and Devon (10). All three
counties are endowed with plentiful supplies
of oolitic limestone. Exceptionally, the early
15th-century pulpit carved with emblems of the
Passion, at Egloshayle, Cornwall is worked in
Caen stone. Many wooden pulpits have stone
bases, like the one at Burford, Gloucestershire,
but most are post-medieval in date.

Gloucestershire’s stone pulpits exploit lavish
carved decoration. North Cerney’s is a star
example, cut from a single block, and supported
on a concave moulded polygonal shaft (Figure 3). Its ornament is an audacious
presentation of crocketted* and finialled ogee*
arches separated by semi-detached buttresses.
It displays three bands of lily pattern, which
happen to match the treatment of the same
motif at Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford,
where the lily is the charge* on the college arms.
The stonemasons at Oxford are known to have
come from Burford and we can assume that
they also carved the pulpit at North Cerney.

It is striking that East Anglian pulpits (Figures 4 and 5), in common with most medieval
wooden church furniture from this part of
England, were more conventionally Gothic
in appearance than pulpits from elsewhere,
particularly the West Country. By contrast,
Devon is renowned for its imaginative
deployment of motifs in three dimensions, as at
Halberton, as well as the county’s many other
ornamental idiosyncrasies. Both tendencies
spring from an enduring love-affair with
the 14th-century Decorated style, so well
exemplified during that period, in both wood
and stone, at Exeter Cathedral. Somerset
is less concerned with spatial composition,
although equally interested in ornament for
its own sake, as characterised by the low relief
vegetal and geometric decoration on the
panel work at Trull (Figure 2).

It is sometimes interesting to note the
interplay between wood and stone carvers
within the same church. Although the former’s
decorative detail tends to be more inventive,
it is sometimes astonishing to discover that
a stonemason could, if required, carve with
equal intricacy. Many Devon stone pulpits
comfortably match the delicacy of the wood
carver’s ‘bossy’ foliage, a local speciality. Often
the pulpit was made en suite with the chancel
screenwork. On these occasions, the aesthetic
effect can be breathtaking, particularly the
juxtaposition of a stone pulpit with a wooden
screen at Dartmouth, Devon. In such cases, it is
a challenge to decide whether both components
were carved by the same craftsman.

In East Anglia two very different specimens
of the delicate ‘wine-glass’ pulpit can be seen
at Sandon, Essex (Figure 4) and Castle Acre,
Norfolk (Figure 5). Both have retained their
stems, with vaulted trumpet sections intact.
Although they share a certain restoration
content, it is merely discreet at Sandon, where
most of the original colouring is lost.

At Castle
Acre, although the Victorian praying angels
at the base of the colonettes* strike a false
note, the surviving full range of polychrome
is astonishing. As a bonus we find painted
marbling on both column and stem, doubtless
an attempt to ensure a certain religious
propriety based on Classical precedent. The
generally excellent state of preservation of the
four surviving painted panels of the Doctors of
the Church is reassuring and, sadly, contrasts
with the pulpit at nearby Burnham Overy,
which has not escaped modern over-painting.
The pulpit’s spandrel* carvings, and the painting
style of the surviving dado* from the chancel
screen, suggest that both components were
made en suite. The painter has been identified
as ‘William Castleacre, steyner and peyntour’,
who is recorded in 1445.

Sandon provides an
interesting contrast, because, now lacking
painted decoration, its principal aesthetic
investment is in the quality and variety of its
early 16th-century carving. Dating the Essex
pulpit presents a challenge, however. One can
understand how its conventional-enough,
somewhat heavy-handed, traceried* panel-heads
could have suggested a late 15th-century
date, yet it displays several features which
push it into the early 16th century, particularly
the pierced waved carving of the lower frieze
and the linenfold* panels. In its original
full colour dress, this elegantly constructed
and decorative piece would have appeared
even more impressive than it does today.

Surviving English medieval pulpits are
not remarkable for the quality of their figure
sculpture. Notwithstanding the opportunities
presented by the pulpit to visually underline
the Christian doctrine, relatively few cases can
be found where this opportunity was taken up.
It was the Doctors of the Church who were
most often recruited, and more usually in the
medium of paint. Augustine was one of the
most renowned theologians of the Christian
church, Gregory the first monk to be made
pope, Jerome translated the Bible into Latin and
Ambrose was a renowned preacher. Any one
of them could provide the text for a sermon.

Sculpturally, they are now depicted in only one
remarkable instance, at Trull, Somerset. Here
they are accompanied by St John the Evangelist,
all five standing with a hovering guardian
angel above (this is another example of a pulpit
designed to blend en suite with a chancel
screen). As in much other West Country
woodwork, the carving style is idiosyncratic and unaffected by metropolitan influence. It
is somewhat stereotyped, but devout, and full
of human feeling. The provincial aesthetic of
these mid 16th-century figure carvings and the
charming but somewhat primitive techniques
elicited by the joinery of their framing, is
witness to a geographical isolation and a
traditionally trained craftsman caught fair and
square between the Gothic and Renaissance.

Finally, at Long Sutton, Somerset, the
wooden pulpit (Figure 6) with a 16-sided rostrum
has been confidently dated to 1430 but with
no apparent proof (the carved initials at the
top of the stem might produce the evidence
for a donor). It stands on a decorated stone
column. The rostrum consists of a tightly-packed
echelon of niches below gablets*,
filled now with the competent figures of the
12 apostles, of 1872.

There are several other
similar English pulpit facades, as at Bovey
Tracey, where the niches are two-tiered,
Cheddar, Somerset and South Burlingham,
Norfolk, but few elicit the same impression
of crowded intensity and miniaturisation.
Most probably, the Long Sutton pulpit
originally accommodated a credal scheme,
the display of the twelve apostles symbolising
the Creed, to which they are each said to
have contributed a verse. This would have
provided an all important pedagogic facility
for the preacher.

At Trull there are 12 small
figures on the buttresses flanking the large
figures, but we cannot be certain that they
were supposed to represent the apostles.
If so, of course, in that church the preacher’s
pedagogic cup would have overflowed.

~~~

Glossary

chantry endowment for the singing of
masses for the soul of the deceased; also
a chapel, etc, dedicated for this purpose

charge design, device, etc depicted on
heraldic arms

colonette small column, often arranged
in clusters

crocket small projecting sculpture of leaves
or flowers used to decorate finials,
gablets, etc

dado lowest part of a chancel screen
between the plinth and the upper rail

gablet small gable or pitched canopy

linenfold relief carving that imitates the
form of folded cloth

monstrance receptacle, usually of gold or
silver, incorporating a transparent
container for the display of a holy relic
or the consecrated bread

ogee ‘s’-shaped architectural or sculptural
form visible in arches and archlets

palmate tierceron vault a circular vaulting
bay which combines a girdle of
secondary ‘lierne’ ribs at its centre,
supported by a system of converging
tertiary ‘tierceron’ ribs

pyx small receptacle for the consecrated
bread

spandrel roughly triangular area or surface
between the arches of an arcade or
between an arch and surrounding frame

tracery ornamental work in which windows,
panels, etc are divided by a decorative
arrangement of ribs, etc

Notes

[1] According to Michael Good’s CD database The
Compendium of Pevsner’s Buildings of England (2nd ed, Yale University Press, 2005), Pevsner
found just six surviving medieval pulpits in the
whole of the North of England and few in the
West Midlands, compared to 42 in Devon alone.

Historic Churches, 2011

Author

CHARLES TRACY PhD FSA is a specialist in
historic church furniture, and has written
several books, including a two-volume study
on English Gothic choir-stalls, and a study of
continental church furniture in England. He is
frequently consulted by dioceses, parishes and
architects over difficult reordering decisions
that hinge on the significance of a church’s
furnishings.